Game Time Data
Travel Distances
We know that DI college teams win on average 63-64% of their home games. We've also dissected this number by school to determine if some home court advantages are worth more than others. It's clear from that analysis that a win on Kentucky's home court should be worth more than a win on Villanova's home court, despite what Villanova fans may have to say about it.
This analysis dives into travel distance and its effect on the away team. With the help of Google we were able to capture the longitude (East/West) and latitudes (North/South) of every game. We don't convert this to miles or any other distance metric, as longitude/latitude degrees is perfectly sufficient for the task.
We first take a look at longitudinal effects, considering one direction at a time. For example, the road team traveling East vs. the road team traveling West. Interestingly, the direction matters, and you may be able to guess why **time zones**. The longitude bins are negative when moving from East to West, and positive when moving from West to East. The values of the bins are the amount of longitude degrees. For example, the -2 to -5 bin is like going from New York to Pittsburgh. In each row, the home team has a higher win percentage in the negative bins. The win percentage also increases as the bins change to higher longitude differences. There's some benefit to the home team when the away team has to travel East, but not as much benefit compared to when East teams move West.
Away Team's Longitude Change East-West | Bin Volume East-West | Home Team Win% East-West | Away Team's Longitude Change West-East | Bin Volumne West-East | Home Team Win% West-East |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
-2 to +2 | 14902 | 0.637 | |||
-2 to -5 | 6228 | 0.65 | 2 to 5 | 5991 | 0.646 |
-5 to -10 | 4382 | 0.674 | 5 to 10 | 4068 | 0.642 |
-10 to -15 | 1945 | 0.697 | 10 to 15 | 1613 | 0.658 |
-15 to -20 | 842 | 0.736 | 15 to 20 | 665 | 0.639 |
-20 to -25 | 470 | 0.768 | 20 to 25 | 361 | 0.668 |
-25 to -30 | 277 | 0.762 | 25 to 30 | 177 | 0.734 |
-30 to -50 | 583 | 0.779 | 30 to 50 | 303 | 0.683 |
It seems that teams struggle more when moving West relative to when teams move East. We're not going to investigate the science behind this, but it could be as simple as time zone change effects. Anyone who has traveled across a time zone can attest to this, and it's not difficult to see why gaining an hour is more detrimental than losing an hour, especially when we're talking about a 40 minute basketball game among college kids.
There's much more we can do with this, but before going any further with East/West movement let's take a look at North/South. The latitude bins are negative when moving from North to South, and positive when moving from South to North. The values of the bins are the amount of latitude degrees. For example, the -2 to -4 bin is like going from New York to North Carolina. We see effects due to travel distance, but it seems to be purely one directional, South moving North.
Away Team's Latitude Change North-South | Bin Volume North-South | Home Team Win% North-South | Away Team's Latitude Change South-North | Bin Volume South-North | Home Team Win% South-North |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
-2 to +2 | 19922 | 0.644 | |||
-2 to -4 | 5388 | 0.639 | 2 to 4 | 5547 | 0.658 |
-4 to -7 | 3091 | 0.646 | 4 to 7 | 3391 | 0.694 |
-7 to -10 | 1406 | 0.619 | 7 to 10 | 1624 | 0.745 |
-10 to -13 | 740 | 0.622 | 10 to 13 | 884 | 0.777 |
-13 to -16 | 317 | 0.609 | 13 to 16 | 368 | 0.736 |
-16 to -22 | 103 | 0.631 | 16 to 22 | 98 | 0.765 |
Are the Northern winters that challenging? I wouldn't actually know as I live in the North and never experienced becoming accustomed to southern weather, but I like to think it can be harsh up here. Can it also be due to altitude effects and unrelated to wether or not it's 15 degrees and -10 with the wind chill? We here at Game Time Data are interested in exploring this further in a similar manner as we presented longitude and latitude, but will save that for a future post.
So far this has been entirely one-team movement, but some of the most important games are going to be on a neutral court and would have two-team movement. So the question is, if both teams were equal in every way possible, except Team A had to travel X miles in the Northwest direction and Team B travels the same X miles but in a strictly East direction, is Team B supposed to win the game? Stay tuned.